


Meet Me at the Corner of Pink and the Apocalypse

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, F/F, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: As it turns out, saving the world takes some trial and error.





	Meet Me at the Corner of Pink and the Apocalypse

High above them, the beacon blinked in static rhythm. It was nestled atop a latticed tower built from alien alloys, part metal and part organic matter, brown and green and slate grey in spots, extending up and up and up. Broadcasting. Beckoning. 

“It occurs to me,” Karkat said, voice thick and undercut, as always, with just a touch of anger. “I should have killed you while I had the chance.” 

Dave let out his breath all at once, making a sound like a deflating balloon. “God, yeah,” he agreed. He grinned up at Karkat, studying his face. All sharp angles and dark lines, wrinkled brows and sharp, sharp teeth. Beautiful. He wished he could take a snapshot with his eyes. “If you had, you’d be up on that ship right now, probably.” 

“Descending in glorious triumph,” Karkat nodded, and his hands tightened on Dave’s hips, claws digging in and prickling him through his clothes. They’d already discarded the body armor. No need for it, anymore. “Marching in line with a few thousand other trolls, ready to sift through the remains of this planet under the banner of the Empress. You know, it’s not often she oversees these operations personally.” 

“Yeah,” Dave sighed, eyes running up and over his cheekbones, down his jawline, memorizing every detail. They weren’t so different cycle to cycle, not really. New scars, sometimes. Slight differences in the way the lines around his eyes creased black into the smooth grey of his skin. Minor differences. He was always still Karkat. “You’d be a real hero. Marching up those back lines, gripping those sickles of yours, trying not to sweat a drop in that bugass military getup you’ve got. Shit. Maybe there’s still time. Get up there, throw yourself at her feet…” 

Karkat scoffed at him, but the lines around his mouth and eyes relaxed, some. He never laughed much, here at the end. It never stopped stop Dave from trying. 

“I’d rather die standing,” Karkat said, and Dave shivered as he heard it echo, back and back and back, shivering along a strand of time grown thick with repetition.

“It’s not so much the standing, for me,” Dave said, and Karkat gave him a familiar, curious look. “It’s more the company.” 

“Ha,” Karkat huffed. It wasn’t really a laugh. Dave decided, as always, to take it anyway. He stepped back, and Karkat’s arms fell away from him, and they just studied each other, poses and expressions, framed by a backdrop of roiling black clouds. Arcs of energy jumped between them, but it wasn’t quite lightning. For one thing, it was relentlessly pink -- fuschia, Karkat would have corrected him -- and wasn’t that funny? 

There was no thunder. All the skin stood up on his arms. There was an almost imperceptible whine in the air, a vibration Dave could feel only because he’d felt it so many times before. 

Overhead, the Condesce’s warship broke through the clouds. Its grotesquely organic alien shell glowed with coy pink promise, and Dave and Karkat turned to face it as one. 

“Rose isn’t coming, is she?” Karkat said, softly. Dave closed his eyes. 

“Not this time,” he said. 

There was a sound, not quite an explosion, like the world’s most extravagantly enormous coke bottle being shaken and twisted open and thrown into the air to wreak whatever havoc it would.

Karkat reached for his hand, and Dave held it tight, watching the shockwave approach from the horizon, igniting all the clouds and the atmosphere above. Pink, pink, pink. The most aesthetic apocalypse imaginable. He hoped that wherever she was, Rose was alive to appreciate it. 

Nothing else to say, this time. 

It happened too fast to feel any pain. Made his job easier, that’s for sure. 

Somewhere in the vast and labyrinthine depths of the void between realities, a clock began to chime. 

Time to go back.

*

“Dave!” 

Rose motioned at him with her free hand, the other holding a thin metal rod. It glowed black and purple, sinister. Bad news, that thing. Shame it had saved their asses so goddamn many times. 

There was an alien chitter, a furious _skree_ , and Rose whirled lightning fast, pointed, and shot, pure unstable energy lashing out to obliterate some unlucky troll. Or maybe one of their monsters. It was hard to tell their sounds apart, sometimes. 

“Dave,” she said again. Softer, this time. “We have to go.” 

“Not yet,” he said, holding his ground. He could feel the web of time they’d been stumbling through tightening around them, timelines coalescing, and he knew she could feel it in her own way, too. Paths where they succeeded crumbling to dust and glitter in the infinite void of her inner eyesight. She hissed at him in frustration. He gave her an apologetic look. 

“I can’t go without him,” he said. 

“There may come a cycle where we pinpoint the moment our failure became inevitable to this decision,” Rose snapped, but she came back to him, hunched over and cradling her weapon, eyes darting all around. His heart swelled. She’d never left him here alone, no matter how frustrated she got. Not once. 

“We’ll worry about that if it happens,” he said. Rose swallowed hard, settling beside him. She slumped over so her forehead pressed against the back of his shoulder. He could smell the sweat and fear and just a hint of eldritch corruption on her. Funny how the stank of the outer gods could become something _comforting._

There was a whistling sound. They ducked down, together. They were prepared for the ensuing explosion, because they’d survived it countless times before. A stench followed, and they were never _quite_ prepared for that no matter how many times they suffered through this moment. Rose coughed, waving a hand in front of her face, and Dave held his breath and peered through the lime green smoke. The trolls hadn’t figured out that their chemical weapons didn't work as intended on human biology, yet. 

They’d have better weapons, later on. 

For now, a lone alien soldier stumbled in through the hole he’d blown in the wall, outfitted in an airtight suit too big for his frame... but they wouldn’t find that out until later. 

Dave stood up. The soldier snarled, lifting a gleaming sickle, and Dave couldn’t help but grin. 

“Hi, Karkat,” he said, cheerful as you please. Karkat stopped, stumbling comically to a halt, face and expression obscured behind his mask. 

“How the FUCK do you know my name?” he demanded, and Dave mouthed the words as he said them, heart hammering, blood thrumming, all of him _singing,_ just so fucking goddamn happy to hear his voice, again. Finally. 

“Dave,” Rose whispered, urgently. “Can you _please_ expedite the introductions? I’d like to waste as little time as possible.” 

“I’ll explain later,” he said. “We gotta make this quick, or Rose is going to just knock us over our heads and drag us out all caveman style, and neither of us wants that.” 

Karkat growled and lifted his sickles. Dave nodded, and drew his sword. 

The trick was to sever Karkat’s air supply. One alien airsack full of lime green smoke, and he was out like a light. He hated it when they pulled that trick, made him feel like an idiot, but convincing him words-wise in this place and this context always took too much time, and time was pretty much their most precious resource.

They had to put out those fucking beacons. Preferably _before_ they summoned the Empress and her atmosphere evaporating spaceship. 

That’d be nice.

*

Beacons cropped up all over the world, pulled up -- _grown_ \-- by purple-blooded trolls with powers even they hadn’t fully catalogued, yet. Karkat never knew exactly how they worked, either. He was so low ranking, he might as well not have had a rank at all. 

It took days to convince him that they’d been here before, all three of them. That they’d done all this before. Dave patiently narrated Karkat’s life to him between stops, secrets and insecurities shared in quiet moments, proof pulled from memories of cycles past, cycles where they had squandered their precious time in all the best ways before they understood exactly what they were meant to be doing. 

He recounted hours spent talking softly until the sunrise, watching over Rose while her eyes rolled back and she beseeched the elder gods for forbidden knowledge, her body twitching and jerking in unsettling bursts. 

Hours spent touching each other, so hesitant at first. Hesitation turning to heat turning to hunger, then the same but in reverse, again and again. Rose shouting at him in those early cycles, shaking her finger and talking about priorities and focus. 

Lately, she’d just smiled sadly and held her tongue, because she knew by now that arguing was pointless. 

“Why didn’t I just kill you, the first time?” Karkat asked, finally, like he always did. “Or, why didn’t you just --” 

“Kill you?” Dave shook his head. “We tried, believe me. The gas didn’t work, but Rose and I didn’t know that, the first time. We were trying not to breathe it in, trying to get out. She got free, and she turned around to help me up, and you grabbed me and pulled me in. Shot a shield grenade to keep her out. You would not believe, my dude, how unbelievably pissed she was. She thought you were going to kill me, right there in front of her.” 

“I still don’t understand why I didn’t!” Karkat glared at him. It’s his sulky glare, the one where his jaw juts out and his shoulders hunch up and it made Dave want to slide over all smooth and suave and slip an arm around him, but they weren’t there, yet, so he didn’t.

“You just… couldn’t,” Dave said, with a little shrug and an apologetic smile. “I was half conked out there, dazed and looking up at you, sure you were going to bring that sickle down on me and it’d all be over, but… you just didn’t. You growled and stomped and swore at me, and then told me to run, and went right back out the hole you blew into the place to begin with.” 

“God,” Karkat pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, groaning. “I’m fucking pathetic,” he said. 

_And I love you_ , Dave thought, but he didn’t say it, because it was too soon. It never went well when he said it too early. Or too late. 

“You’re not so bad,” he said instead, smiling, and Karkat met his eyes and flushed bright cherry red and coughed into his clawed hands.

“Did we really…” he started, cheeks blazing, and Dave just nodded. “And you remember all of that.” This he said flatly, deadpan and unamused. 

“Every last second,” Dave said, truthfully. 

“Seems like a pretty fucking far jump between me leaving you to die later and us... “ he waved his hand around, looking away. 

“Yeah, like, fifty some odd fucking cycles,” Dave laughed, leaning back, hands on his thighs. “I’m cutting out a lot of details, man. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“If we saved this pathetic, unworthy human planet,” Karkat said, turning and spitting the words at him like fire, “You’d have all the time you’d ever need to explain to me just how, exactly, I ever could have fallen for a scrawny pale specimen of semi-intelligent life here on a planet the locals so fucking inventively elected to call _Earth._ ” 

Dave nodded along with him, still smiling. It didn’t much matter what he was saying. Just hearing his too-loud alien voice again was like fucking aural ambrosia. “I would,” he said. “But, just between you and me, man… I think you’ll figure it out for yourself a little ways before then.” He winked. Karkat rolled his eyes at him.

A clock ticked incessantly in his head, counting down the precious few weeks they had left. 

*

Rose typed commands into a flickering monitor station, face awash in sickly glowing green light. She had a smear of purple troll blood marring one cheek. The guy -- troll guy -- manning (trolling?) the beacon had exploded like a fucking fountain, wriggling tentacles sprouting out of him like the most unholy matrimony of fetish hentai and edgy snuff film. Dave, for his part, wished he’d remembered to look away. 

 

“Watch the doors, Dave,” Rose said, and his face went warm. He straightened up to do so, properly abashed and fidgeting in place. Karkat had gone up without them. Rose knew all the universe cheat codes or whatever the fuck they were to shut the things down the right way, but Karkat always insisted on smashing the things once they went dark for good measure. 

They could figure out how to get rid of the husks later. You know, when they eventually won this war of attrition. 

The walls around him expanded and contracted, disturbingly _alive_ , and while he watched with his stomach vaguely churning a bright pink spider-like insect crawled out of the framework and began busily repairing a chunk of wall that had been blown out in their initial assault of the place. Dave’s nose wrinkled, but it was hard to look away. Grotesque. 

Behind him, Rose made a triumphant sound, and the entire structure shuddered around them. The pink insect froze in place, the shuddering stopped, and the entire beacon seemed to let out one last gasping death rattle, the sound of it utterly alien and booming around them. The greenish tint to the walls slowly faded to metallic grey, and even the previously pink spider-thing had curled into a pale silver-grey ball, still stuck to the wall it had been repairing. 

Karkat would be smashing the orb at the top of the beacon tower, now. 

And any trolls near enough and strong enough in their psychic abilities to sense the beacon failing would be on their way. 

Maybe it was better he was up there, out of harm’s way. 

“Get ready,” Rose said, stepping up to stand by his side, wand held at the ready. It pulsed rapidly, swirling with eerie purple light. It looked _eager_.

“Rose, please,” Dave said, with confidence he didn’t feel. “I was born ready.” 

“I assure you, you were not,” Rose elbowed him lightly. “I was there, after all.” 

He laughed, and miracle of miracles, it sounded a little bit genuine. 

Nervous, but genuine. 

“Hey Rose,” he said, holding his sword up and ready, concentrating on making sure it didn’t shake. 

“Yes, Dave?” 

“Do you really think we can win this, one day?” 

“Of course,” she said, and the way she didn’t bother to even hesitate actually made him feel better. “It’s just a matter of time.” 

He snorted at her. 

The clock in his head kept ticking. 

*

Beacons fell, paths narrowed, and timelines solidified along a well-worn path, the Pink Apocalypse only days away, now. 

They hadn’t lost, yet. In fact, they were closer to winning than they’d ever been. The problem was -- well, that they were human. Mostly. And they were fucking _exhausted._

It wasn’t just the beacons. There were relief efforts for the people still fighting, or even just barely still surviving. Coordinating with other groups, hiding communications from the invaders -- how many cycles had it taken to learn how to do _that,_ even with Karkat’s help? He couldn’t remember. 

Even knowing what they had to do and pretty much exactly how much time they had to do it, making their overtaxed minds and overworked bodies follow orders got harder and harder, the closer they got to Go Time. 

Three beacons left. Not enough time to go together, even with their crudely copied (according to Karkat) transportalizer technology. The entirety of the Empress’s remaining Highblood forces would be guarding them with all they had. 

Splitting up here had always felt like giving up. Conceding yet another cycle to the Empress and her garish fucking bugship. Dave’s limbs felt heavy, his head like it was stuffed full of old snotty rags. Rose proposed the plan, the way she always did. She’d handle one herself, Dave and Karkat would handle another, and they’d meet in the middle for the final rendezvous. 

“You never show up,” Dave argued, like he always did. “Nine times out of ten, you die when we try this, Rose, you _know_ that.” 

“Nine failures in ten attempts is a lot better than _ten_ failures out of ten, Dave, what do you want me to do?” she looked at him with eyes rimmed with black, something glittering and _wrong_ and wholly Eldritch staring back at him through her irises. He swallowed, hard. The fucking wand. They never got far without it. With it, she ended up like this.  
“Let us go with you,” he begged her. 

“Absolutely not,” she refused, her voice echoing with something bigger than herself, a second voice layered on top of hers that spoke with a cadence that was not even slightly like his sister’s. 

They fought for hours, arguing back and forth, wasting precious hours they didn’t have. Rose’s pupils contracted more and more the longer they went on, a filmy dark shadow shimmering around her, coalescing with each passing second. Karkat watched them from a shadowed corner of their present hideaway, arms folded, lips thin. Eventually, he stomped away. Dave barely noticed him going, because he’d been expecting him to leave. He always went downstairs, here at the end, balanced on the precipice of the plan and decision that would ultimately decide their fate. 

Dave always found him later, and they always… 

Well. If Rose could waste a few hours arguing with him, he could waste a few hours saying goodbye to Karkat. Again. 

Eventually, Rose stood with a familiar air of finality, cutting him off for good. Her feet were, honest to god, no longer even touching the floor. Her pupils had all but disappeared, white rimmed with pulsing purple, so much like the blood of the trolls who raised the beacons.

“I’m going,” she announced, voice hoarse, eyes snapping between lilac and a darker shade. She pointed her wand directly at his chest. He held up his hands. “Don’t follow me,” she said, her voice almost guttural.

“You know I won’t,” Dave said. It was hard not to cry. It always came to this. They could get so close, so close, so fucking _close_ , but they couldn’t fucking win. 

Rose turned and zipped off with hardly a sound, her malignant aura crackling around her. He wouldn’t see her again, not this cycle. He could feel the timelines tightening like a noose. 

A strange tickle at the back of his brain told him that normally they’d be locked in, by now. He brushed it off. 

At least he still had Karkat. 

He rubbed his face and took a breath and made for the stairs, spiraling down further into their underground bunker, where the rooms they took fitful, infrequent rests in all sat lined up neatly in a row. 

And this time, when he stumbled into his block, heart aching and desperate for something, anything to make the overwhelming despair abate for just a second -- Karkat wasn’t there. 

Panic seized him. 

*

Rose’s beacon was a monstrosity, larger than any of the others they’d taken down by far. The trolls must have been pumping everything they had into bolstering it. Hundreds of corpses lined the otherwise empty wasteland around it -- Rose had clearly been through -- but the pink orb at the top of the tower was still blinking steady as ever. A part of him wondered dully if she was already dead. If Karkat was dead. If she’d killed him, or something else had happened, or … 

His fingers tightened around his sword. 

Only one way to find out. 

He cut his way through, hacking at the organic latticework of the beacon tower, more terrified of what he would find inside than anything that could have accosted him halfway through the task. But nothing came. Rose had obliterated everything. 

Everything, except for the beacon itself. 

He stumbled into the control chamber, the green screen glaring ominously at him from the control panel. Troll blood and unrecognizable viscera smeared the walls and the stained the floor, and his stomach heaved and he nearly lost it right then and there, which was fucking ridiculous, because he’d killed how many trolls with his own two goddamn hands throughout the cycles? 

God. 

He had no idea how to work the panels. Rose always insisted the instructions were intranslatable, and they outer Gods would only whisper the answers to her. He could mash buttons on the stupid fucking thing for days and accomplish nothing, and they knew from experience that breaking it physically did pretty much nothing. 

Up to the top, then. 

It felt right, somehow. Inevitable. The tempo of the clock in his head sped up just slightly, and he stepped to the rhythm of its incessant ticking, climbing stairs that became a ladder, breathing hard by the time he reached the top. 

He never liked climbing these things. The pink orb was alive, too, throbbing grotesquely, and it was several seconds before he could tear his eyes away from it to survey the rest of the situation. 

Rose, frozen in violet crystal, barely visible with her mouth open and her features contorted, like she’d been trapped like a fly in amber mid-scream. 

A troll woman, tall and elegant and strangely beautiful, encased in a flowing red robe, turning to look at him. 

Rose’s wand, snapped in two, crunching beneath the troll woman’s feet. 

“Kanaya,” a voice said, weakly, _Karkat’s_ voice, and the troll woman wavered in place. Dave could see her face, flushed jewel green and contorted in an agonized mix of furious and devastated. “Please, just listen to me, please, please, listen. Please.” 

Dave started forward, desperate to get to Karkat. The troll woman -- Kanaya stepped neatly in front of him, blocking his way. 

“You betrayed us,” the troll woman said, voice hard and bitter. “Do you know how many times I tried to contact you, Karkat? Do you know how sick I was, when I thought you’d died?” 

“I _know_ that, but, Kanaya --” 

“I don’t know what these humans have done to you,” she said, voice sparking with rage. Dave’s sword wavered. He knew in the very depths of his soul that this wasn’t a fight he was going to walk away from. “I don’t know, and I don’t _care._ I will find a way to fix it. I _will_ find a way to save you,” she said, and then she lunged for Dave, faster than his eyes could even register. 

She held him up like he was nothing, dangling him from the front of his shirt. Her red hood fell over her shoulders, and behind her, he could see Karkat, huddled against the railing. And, finally, Karkat could see him. 

“Dave,” he gasped. 

“Starting here,” Kanaya said, grimly. 

“Kanaya Maryam,” Karkat said, speaking quickly, his eyes never leaving Dave’s. “Kanaya _Maryam_ , do not forget her name, we need her. I wanted to stay with you -- you have no idea how bad I wanted to stay with you -- I should have contacted her sooner. I was too fucking afraid. Kanaya Maryam, do you understand me? She has to save Rose, before --” 

“That’s enough of that,” Kanaya said, and there was a terrible sound that turned Dave’s bowels into liquid, and -- 

Somewhere in the vast and labyrinthine depths of the void between realities, a clock began to chime. 

Time to go back.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Apocalypse / Fairy Tale" theme sprint for the Strilondes discord.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at [landofsomethingsomething!](http://landof%20something%20something.tumblr.com)


End file.
